The Midwife's Tale (14 page)

“Then you’re hiding from everyone here.”

“I was hiding real good, till that blasted cat bit me. But just till nightfall. P. J. said I couldn’t tell—” He snapped his mouth shut and clenched his jaw, as if he realized he had already said too much.

“You’re sworn to secrecy, I suppose.”

He nodded.

“A man’s word should count for something,” she admitted. She pointed to his bleeding hand. “Leech has very sharp teeth. I bet that hurts like the dickens.”

His bottom lip trembled.

She pressed her case. “I could put some salve on it to take out the sting. I could clean up your knee, too. Then when you leave after dark, you’d be stronger and feeling better.”

He straightened his shoulders and tilted up his chin. “It don’t hurt that much.”

She wanted to take him into her arms and hold him tight, long enough to melt the armor of false bravado and mistrust he wore and comfort the frightened little boy inside. She knew that was exactly what she could not do, not if she ever hoped to earn his trust.

She glanced out the window. There were still several good hours of sunlight left, which gave her plenty of time to convince him he should let her take him home.

If he refused, she would have to assert her authority as his elder and insist. There was no way she would let that boy traipse home in the dark, yet she knew from experience it would serve the boy better to let him reach that conclusion on his own. There was more than a little part of her that felt guilty for not alerting someone or taking him back right away. Given the strong feeling in town against the academy boys, both she and the boy would be better off if they traveled at night and avoided meeting anyone from town. If he even suspected she might alert someone else to his presence here, he might run off to somewhere other than home, which led her right back to following her intuition and giving him a little time.

She prayed for patience, stood up, and rearranged her skirts. “You rest up here a while. Instead of going for a ride now, I think I’ll wait till later. I have some herbs I need to harvest. If you change your mind about letting me tend to your cuts and scrapes, you’ll find me in the herb garden between here and the tavern. If I’m not there, that means I finished and went to my room. It’s the
one jutting off the rear of the tavern. I’ll tie back the curtain on the window so you can look inside and see me,” she murmured before turning away from him and walking back toward the ladder.

She had only taken a few steps when he called out to her. “You won’t get someone to make me go home right now?”

She turned and looked back at him over her shoulder. “Since you didn’t tell me your name or where you live, that might be hard to do. Right now, maybe you should do some thinking about the people who are worried about you. I’ll bring you some supper later.”

Mistrust darkened his eyes. “You won’t tell anyone I’m here?”

“You have my word, but I must have your word you won’t leave until dark and until we’ve had another chance to talk and decide what’s best for you to do.”

“How do I know you’re not lyin’? That you won’t send for the sheriff or Reverend Hampton?”

She caught the smile of relief that he had unwittingly given her a clue to his identity and affirmed her suspicion he was, indeed, one of the academy boys. “You have my word, young man. That should count for something.”

He worried his bottom lip. “I’ll stay. Just till dark.”

She nodded and made her way back to the ladder. She was halfway down when she heard his voice speak in a loud whisper. “I sure do like corn bread with lots of honey for supper. If you got any.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” She chuckled all the way to the bottom of the ladder. The way to a young boy’s trust, if not his heart, was apparently still through his stomach. Given the size of the little waif, with his pitifully thin face and limbs, no one had tried to earn either his trust or his heart for a very long time.

There was still no sign of the boy.

Martha prolonged her work in the herb garden as long as she could, hoping against hope he might come to her for help. After two hours of picking the best of the herbs, pruning away those damaged by insects, and gathering seeds for Bird, while keeping one eye on the stable door to make sure the boy did not run off, she had no choice but to retire to her room and wait for him there.

Once inside, she placed the baskets on her worktable and stored away her garden gloves. She refilled the seed bowl for Bird, who eyed her warily from his nest in the corner of the cage. One quick glance around the floor of his cage told her she had better clean it out while she had the door open. While she worked, she realized she really had not given the animal’s name much thought.

She sighed. She had a bird in a cage named Bird and a boy in the stable loft named Boy. Both had been severely wounded, one in body, the other in spirit. Both were completely dependent on her right now, although Boy would probably argue that point. She carefully latched the cage door when she finished and took some comfort that at least Bird was easy to control. “That should keep you in for the night,” she teased.

He cocked his head and ruffled his feathers.

She chuckled. “Go ahead. Try. You can’t get out and sleep on Victoria’s cot again tonight, so accept it. You have a perfectly fine nest right where you are.”

Humming softly, she spread out the comfrey from the first basket. Her hands halted in midair when a thought suddenly interrupted her work. “The curtain! I forgot!” She hurried to the window and tied back the curtain. She glanced outside and surveyed the rear of the property. The door to the stable was still closed. There were several wagons, including a Conestoga,
in the yard now, and a lone bulldog stood guard near the horses tethered together at the trough.

There was no sign of the boy.

“Guide him, Lord. Help him to trust me,” she whispered, and returned to her work.

She positioned her chair at the end of the table to give her a view through the window while she worked. She bundled and tied the rest of the comfrey and finished off every one of the sweet treats Fern and Ivy had given her that morning.

The combination of work and sweets helped to mitigate the sense of total frustration she had experienced since coming home. Unable to resolve her daughter’s disappearance or Rosalind’s troubles or her feelings for Thomas, to come to terms with the impact Dr. McMillan’s presence might have on her calling, or to help Samuel Meeks, she faced the challenge the boy in the stable presented with renewed energy and hope.

In truth, the boy had a real chance for a good future, assuming she could convince him to return to the academy and let Reverend Hampton provide the guidance the child so sorely needed. Of all the people in Trinity whose needs lay heavy on her heart, only Samuel Meeks seemed to face a future bleaker than this boy’s.

If she did not find a remedy for Samuel’s failing vision and he did become blind, she had no idea how he would survive. As adept as he had become in making the transition from life at sea to life here in an isolated cabin, Samuel had not endeared himself to the community—a community that would be his only source of help if he faced the future in total blindness. Stymied for the present in her efforts to help Samuel, she rallied all of her energies to help the boy.

When she paused to stretch the muscles in her neck and looked down, she found that the contents of the baskets of
dill and horehound had been emptied and prepared for hanging as well.

But still no boy appeared.

She retrieved the ladder she needed from the storeroom and set it into place with the top of the ladder leaning against a crossbeam in the middle of the room. She wiped her brow with the hem of her apron. “Either that ladder is getting heavier or I’m getting far too old to haul it around all the time,” she grumbled, but she found a great deal of satisfaction in doing physical work. In truth, she had only to ask her brother for help. He would gladly have set the ladder into place for her, but she was as independent as she was determined to make her own way in this world.

Grateful to have the worst of her task done, she grabbed three bundles of comfrey. After climbing up the ladder, she hung one bundle, then the second. When she stretched a bit too far to hang the third, she lost her balance, dropped the last bundle, and grabbed the ladder with both hands. With her heart pounding, she looked down and saw the third bundle lying in a heap on the floor. She pressed her forehead to a rung on the ladder and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal, then climbed back down.

With her feet now on firm ground, she bent down to retrieve the bundle she had dropped and heard a loud racket in the rear yard. Horses whinnied. A dog barked. Again and again; the sound of the dog’s frenzied charge around the wagon yard was all too familiar. She half expected to hear the dog yelp if he had the misfortune to corner Leech, when a mighty pounding at her door interrupted her thoughts.

She whirled about, only to see the door hurl open and bang against the wall. A whirlwind of fury and fear charged inside, grabbed hold of the door, and slammed it closed.

Apparently just in time. A loud thud on the outside of the door was followed by a vicious, barking harangue that lasted for several minutes before the bulldog finally quieted in defeat.

She grinned, in spite of herself, but the look in Boy’s eyes told her she was going to need divine intervention now more than ever to win his trust.

11

T
he boy pressed his back to the door and fought to catch his breath. When he did, he glared at her. “Cudda warned me about the dang dog,” he spat.

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“You musta heard him barkin’ and tryin’ to take a chunk outta my leg. You cudda tried to stop him—”

“I really thought he was chasing Leech.”

“Do I look like a cat?”

She cringed and accepted the guilt she deserved from his reprimand. She should have warned him about the dog in the yard or checked sooner to see if he needed help, although she could not condone the lack of respect he showed to her. She saved her own reprimand for later.

“He was only trying to protect the horses. That’s his job. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how Leech loves horses.”

He waved one of his arms in the air. “Stupid dog. I hate dogs. Cats, too. Matter of fact, there ain’t one single animal worth nothin’, ’cept for horses. Too bad they’re so dumb.”

She held back an immediate retort. The boy had probably known a fair share of both street dogs and cats, and she tried not to think about the other critters, like rats, he had encountered on the streets of New York City. Out of loyalty to her mare, however, she felt obliged to speak up. “Grace isn’t dumb.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I saw her in the stable. She’s the ugliest one there. Might be the ugliest horse I ever saw.”

She almost bit her tongue holding back a reprimand. “I happen to agree with you,” she admitted, “but you might have put it a kinder way. Grace might be the ugliest horse in these parts, but her beauty lies beneath her coat. In her spirit. Where true beauty lies.”

He looked at her like she had grown an extra ear in the middle of her forehead. “Horses don’t have spirits.”